54 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



I believe that my plan, my system, is responsible for the 

 success I've had. Some of them say it is my soil. I do not 

 care what kind of soil it is, I believe you can get it into condi- 

 tion better for fruit growing, much better by that treatment. 

 Perhaps it is my soil. I do not know about that, but even if it is, 

 I believe that the treatment helps it. Some say it is the soil 

 and the location of my orchards. They say there is a good 

 deal of moisture in my land, but I believe that will work just 

 as well where the ground is dry, because there are some parts 

 of the orchard which are dry, and previously we found that 

 the crops would dry out there to some extent, but since we have 

 been able to increase and hold the humus (and I have taken 

 particular pains to watch it to see), I do not see any differ- 

 ence in the result or in the fruit where we have applied those 

 conditions. Perhaps it is well to cut the grass there a little 

 earlier, but as a rule, you want to let it grow in the orchard 

 through the spring and thus stimulate the fruit bud formation 

 through the fall, and as the grass decays through the fall it 

 makes a mulch all over the roots, and that is just what you 

 want. 



A tree, you know, is a continuous crqp on the ground. It is 

 not like a crop of corn. The tree stands there all the while 

 demanding this plant food, and you must keep putting it there 

 if you want good, strong healthy trees. So I say, accumulate 

 humus when the trees are small. 



Now a great many men who want to set out a young orchard 

 say, let's cultivate that one year. You are robbing the trees of 

 something that they need if you do that. Accumulate humus, 

 and accumulate this decayed vegetable matter, and so get the 

 soil into proper conditions for plant life. That is the secret of 

 it. That is what we need more than anything else. 



Now I have always found that to stimulate the orchard with 

 nitrogen is a wrong thing to do. I have been observing what 

 these men who have been sowing leguminous plants get from it. 

 They begin by telling me that their fruit does not color enough. 

 At the Western Association meeting some of the men got up 

 there and .said that if they could have waited until January 

 they would have had some nice apples. Their fruit did not 

 color well up to the time they had to pick it. What is the 

 reason of that? A\'hat had those men been doing in their 



